Delegates: Michael Moore a 'Fat Pig'
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You can call Michael Moore (search) a lot of things — and Republicans do. They say the creator of "Fahrenheit 9-11" is a traitor, a liar, a scoundrel, but inevitably some deploy the last acceptable slur in the American arsenal of insults.
They call him ... a fat man.
Moore, who attended this week's Republican National Convention (search) as a columnist for USA Today, was greeted by delegates who derided him as a "fat pig."
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Perhaps they read the book by David Hardy and Jason Clarke, "Michael Moore is a Big Fat Stupid White Man." Or they came across the suggested slogan for the Web site moorewatch.com — "Michael Moore: Putting the vast in vast left-wing conspiracy."
Or Andrea Harris' screed in her "Too Much to Dream" blog, describing Moore as "fattyfatfat, Fatty McFatperson Three-Big-Macs Corpulent Sack of Fat." Or conservative columnist Ben Shapiro's dismissal of the "fat, fraudulent filmmaker."
Now Moore is a large man. Even fellow leftist Ralph Nader (search) has said he should lose weight. "He's over 300 pounds. He's like a giant beach ball," Nader said.
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But the Republicans' repeated fat insults are testimony to two truths:
1. They really, really, really dislike Moore.
2. In the 21st century, fat is still an acceptable and powerful slur.
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"It is the one physical characteristic that gives people carte blanche to behave in abusive ways," says Paul Campos, a University of Colorado law professor and author of "The Obesity Myth: Why America's Obsession with Weight is Hazardous to Your Health."
The Republicans are "behaving exactly like the third-grade bullies who tormented me as a child," says Marilyn Wann, author of the book "FAT!SO?" "Any time you invoke the f-word" — and here she means "fat," not another f-word — "you're using an incredibly powerful weapon."
"They're thinking this is going to hurt him more, this is going to hurt him as a person," agrees Sandy Schaffer, New York chair of the National Association to Advance Fat Acceptance.
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Moore says he once was skinny, but put on weight in the 1980s when he lived on $99 a week in unemployment and subsisted on cheap, starchy foods. He wants to lose weight, he has said.